AVATAR rhymes with BLUE WAR

Poster for James Cameron's movie AVATAR

Cover for my 2008 novel BLUE WAR

I never wanted to sound like one of those poor malcontents who claim their unknown story was ripped off by Harry Potter or TWILIGHT, but sometimes the ego churns itself up enough to entertain such giddiness. When the TV movie based on Stephen King’s THE LANGOLIERS appeared, I wondered if Mr. King had read my story STATUES in issue 16 of GOREZONE, former sister magazine to FANGORIA. In STATUES, a group of students visiting a museum get locked in a moment of time and stand helpless as they are nibbled on by toothy Pac-Man-like floating balls. (GOREZONE 16, here: http://www.madmags.de/en/archive/single-view-literature/edition/gorezone/16 ) In THE LANGOLIERS, a group of people stuck in time are attacked by creatures that are little more than big munching Pac-Men. Hmm! But as it turns out, STATUES appeared in GOREZONE in November 1990, while the book in which THE LANGOLIERS appeared, FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT, was released in September of 1990.

So, how paranoid should I allow myself to get about James Cameron’s new movie, AVATAR? Well, this time it was another author – a British friend — who put the suggestion in my head, by telling me that he and others had been discussing a BLUE WAR/AVATAR connection. BLUE WAR being of course my 2008 novel from Solaris Books, in which Earth industrialists on a lush tropical world threaten the well-being of the blue-skinned indigenous people as they seek to suck the planet’s resources. In AVATAR (and all my info on this comes merely from what I’ve read on the web), industrialists on a lush tropical world threaten the well-being of the blue-skinned indigenous people as they seek to suck the planet’s resources. There are some other funny similarities. My protagonist is JEREMY STAKE, a former soldier who empathizes with the blue-skinned folk by taking on their physical appearance (he is a shape-shifting mutant). In AVATAR, the protagonist JAKE SCULLY is a wounded soldier who empathizes with the blue-skinned folk by telepathically controlling a bioengineered “avatar” created in their image. Stake is in love with a beautiful and fierce local warrior named Thi. Jake falls in love with a beautiful and fierce local warrior named Neytiri. In BLUE WAR there are hairless dog creatures called “snipes,” while one source I read on the web had AVATAR characters threatened by hairless dog-like creatures. In BLUE WAR there are giant floating jellyfish called “benders,” while in AVATAR one scene described online had floating jellyfish creatures (though, if they’re what I saw in one of the movie’s stills, these creatures are very small and spore-like). The locals in BLUE WAR are called the HA JIIN. The locals in AVATAR are called the NA’VI. (As in, the NAtIVes?) Ah well, who knows. Nothing new under the sun, great minds think alike, and all that. Still, when one reads a line from the movie like, “Everything on Pandora is deadly. Every plant and animal out there wants to kill you and eat your eyeballs,” I’m reminded of a novel I just read, Harry Harrison’s DEATHWORLD, in which it is said, “Plants and animals on Pyrrus are tough…you would be dead in seconds of leaving the ship.” Cameron is certainly enough of a SF fan to know about some of what has come before AVATAR. Then again, I read online that AVATAR has been in the works for 14 years, but the technology simply wasn’t there before (from what I’ve seen, the movie looks like an especially gorgeous, especially protracted video game cut scene). Well, I guess I’ll save my court case…for now. But we shall see when the movie opens this December, Mr. Cameron…ohhh, we shall see!